Pat Cuneo: 'Cracker' plant holds great potential for region

Tuesday

Mar 14, 2017 at 2:01 AM

Now I won’t mention any names, but the woman I’ve been married to for almost 30 years couldn’t understand the big fuss over the “cracker” plant being built near Pittsburgh when Saltines have been around since the late 1800s.

No, not those crackers, she learned, but the ones that will be produced by the giant Shell petrochemical plant being constructed in Beaver County. As Valerie Myers' excellent reporting has pointed out, Erie’s plastic plants and hundreds of other companies and workers in the region could benefit greatly from this plant and perhaps others to follow.

Among the biggest winners are trades workers from miles around, including here, who have already started building this mini-city near the Ohio River. The work will take about four years and, at its peak, about 70 busloads of workers will be brought in daily for the construction. It was certainly not surprising that a seminar for companies and groups that hope to do business with the plant flocked to Titusville last week. This is exciting.

• Do we now need a weekly competition for the biggest lie?

Among last week’s contenders were Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, and our very own U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, of Butler, R-3rd Dist.

Pruitt, whose many lawsuits filed against the EPA were still unresolved as he was sworn in to lead the agency, proclaimed that carbon dioxide is not “a primary contributor” to global warming. Really? Such nonsense contradicts accepted analysis by most scientists that greenhouse gas emissions, led by carbon dioxide, are responsible for raising Earth’s average temperature to an alarming degree.

Price, similarly to Pruitt opposing the environment, has been an Obamacare critic and opponent since before its adoption. He told a “Meet the Press” audience that “nobody will be worse off financially” under a new Republican health care bill, and that most people will be covered. That would be correct if you don’t count the millions who will lose their coverage, the millions of dollars more that the American middle class will likely pay for health insurance, and the estimated $157 billion tax cut that millionaires will get with the repeal of Obamacare.

The bill itself is terrible, but the spin from House Speak Paul Ryan and the GOP leadership as a whole has been dishonest.

Which brings us to Kelly, who took part in the decision by the House Ways and Means Committee to endorse the “Trumpcare” bill before it even had a price tag or scoring from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

It was on another subject, however, that Kelly made the baseless and offensive claim that former President Barack Obama is running a “shadow government” to undermine Donald Trump's presidency. That particular lie deservedly drew a petition from the activist group Keystone Progress urging the House Ethics Committee to censure Kelly.

I wonder whether Kelly was concocting a lie or mimicking the spirit of Trump’s unsupported claim that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the campaign. And this congressman represents the city of Erie?

Of all the feckless behavior Americans have had to endure from Trump’s erratic government and the Republican Congress that seems intent on helping the wealthy at the expense of the middle class, the health care bill seems the worst affront to decency.

This horrible bill is opposed by doctors, hospitals, the AARP and many other respected groups because it will sicken and kill Americans, whether they are Democrats, Republicans or Independents. And for what? Tax breaks for the rich and a twisted argument over freedom?